Picture Credit: Netflix / Oli Julian
The Twits features a little bit of everything in the music department, courtesy of composer Oli Julian. There are original songs from [founder of Talking Heads] David Byrne, as well, that make the Roald Dahl adaptation a musical feast of sorts. No instrument was off-limits to Julian, who wanted a childlike experimentation and wonder well-suited for Phil Johnston’s animated film.
The Twits is the latest Dahl adaptation from Netflix. It’s got the sense of danger and play associated with the classic author’s work. Kids are challenged, but all in good fun — a line Julian and the filmmakers walk well. Julian, who previously composed Catastrophe and The Full Monty, recently spoke with What’s On Netflix about composing work for children and playing the saw.
You just completed a half-marathon for Concertteenies in Sheffield, right? Sounds like a good cause.
Well, it is a charity that a friend of mine set up that’s trying to get better music education and experiences for babies and young children. There have been so many cutbacks in schools in the last 10 or 20 years in this country that music provision is not what it used to be. And so, it’s a charity that does great work for young children and babies in this area. I was raising money for them.
That’s great. Congratulations. For The Twits, did you consider how children hear music differently? How does a film score work for them?
Well, I think they like interesting and new sounds. With The Twits, I was keen to make the sounds as particular and new and interesting as possible. A lot of the different characters in the movie have their own unique sonic signature or their own instrument. The Frog, the Sweet-Toed Toad, is a bass clarinet put through a wah-wah pedal. I would just have fun experimenting with different sounds, and I think children respond to funny noises. I think that’s the key — to get ’em hooked.
Yes, you definitely have funny noises, but it is a very full score. For Mr. Napkin, at one point, you just have an electric guitar wailing.
[Laughs] The only piece of music in the film that is rock or metal in any way. It was just a great one-off moment to do something entirely different from the rest of the score. It’s the opposite of Mr. Napkin, being a gentle character. It was Mr. Napkin going full throttle.
Being a Roald Dahl adaptation, how important is creating a sense of wonder in the score?
Very important. I mean, it’s all very well having a lot of disparate instrumentation, but you need something to tie it together. What I settled on was this kind of “orchestral Americano,” which is what I was calling it. It’s the orchestra plus guitars and banjos and things that would root us in the location of where the story’s taking place and give it that scale and scope that you want for a film of that size. Small characters — and they’re cute characters — go on a very big journey with a lot of danger. The Twits are scary at times, and the whole story has the full gamut of emotions from sweetness and empathy through to terror and comedy. So, the instrumentation needed to do the whole lot.
Whenever you’re doing a score, you’re always looking for moments of pathos. What were those moments in The Twits?
I think of Beesha’s journey to discovering who her real family was. She starts off being convinced that her own family, her parents, are going to come back for her when she’s been left at the orphanage — but they’re not. When they don’t, she appreciates who her real family are — and they’re right in front of her. They’re her friends, they’re the people who help her. They’re the Muggle-Wumps who treat her kindly. There are a few key moments where we really lean into that and give that emotion what it deserves.
The movie also leans into how grotesque Roald Dahl’s worlds can be — especially with Mr. and Mrs. Twit. It’s not The Witches by any means, but how scary could you musically make those characters?
It’s always a thing. I think you kind of go too far and then come back. I mean, I tested it on my own kids as well, to see where the line was. But the Roald Dahl characters are always grotesque, and there’s always an element of humor to them, even if they are kind of terrifying. You can push it probably a bit further musically, in terms of how scary you make the jump scares, because immediately, you’re going to undercut that tension or that drama with an amusing-looking character or a joke.
Was there a scene, in particular, where the line was quite clear of how far not to go?
Inside the Twits’ house. We first scored when Beesha and Busby went into the Twits’ house with a haunted house, spooky vibes. [Director] Phil [Johnston] and I decided that we really didn’t need any music there. It was kind of scary enough. We decided it was sound design to give that sense of, is this a haunted place? Is this a murderer’s house? You don’t really know, but it definitely gives a sense of unease when you enter that place. The music was just too much, so we realized that we didn’t need to score there.
In the house, you score a fart and burp joke with such class.
[Laughs] Yeah, well, the kids were under the bed, and even though Mr. Twit was farting and burping, you still want to maintain that tension and maintain that fear that is within them. Otherwise, it was dispelled by the dramatic moment. So yeah, keeping the music classy was a way of allowing for those moments — the farts and the burps and everything — to exist.
David Byrne’s original songs for the film are delightful. How’d that collaboration begin and evolve?
The thing is, he had already written his songs, or at least done his first demos, before I came on board. They were animating to his songs before I started scoring. But we had our first chat fairly soon after I came on board, to kind of check that we were aligned in terms of what we had in mind for instrumentation and tone.
I hadn’t even heard his songs at that stage, but I had done some demos for a pitch, and it turned out that they were quite similar in instrumentation and tone. We were both thinking along the same lines. We collaborated a little bit more at the end. When I came to do the big recording sessions, we wanted to meld the score and songs a bit more.
I used a kids’ choir on the score, especially with the Muggle-Wumps. There’s a lot of very high children singing there. We wanted to bring them into his lullaby song that the Muggle-Wumps sing, so I did an arrangement for the choir for his song there. I also did an arrangement of brass and strings for the “Problem is You” song before the mayor’s butt exploded, just to make it more cinematic.
We were at slightly different ends of the timeline for the production. I started in 2020 when it was going to be a series originally, but I didn’t actually start properly in earnest until 2023.
Picture: Netflix
How’d that change affect your work?
Well, I wrote my demos to scenes that were imagined for the TV series that never made it to the final film. It changed so much in that time, but luckily, tonally and vibe-wise it was right, so that didn’t change. The instrumentation and style were settled on from the beginning.
How else did you find David Byrne’s voice and harmonies inspired you?
He’s so universally brilliant and loved. I feel that voice — he’s at home on a kind of DIY, homemade track as he is on something more electronic. So, it was great. There’s just a particular way that he writes — his harmonies are very particular — that you know it’s a David Byrne song when you hear it. It was a real privilege to work with that.
You started playing music as a teenager. When you’re scoring a kids’ movie, is there a part of you that tries to go back to those early creative years of learning and just trying anything?
Always, because if you overthink things, they’ll often get worse. That’s my thought. Often the first thought is the best. I play a lot of instruments quite badly, so I’m kind of a jack of all trades. There’s not one instrument that I’ve trained on or anything. I was originally a drummer, and then I picked up the guitar, I picked up the piano, and picked up the bass. Everything that I write comes from that almost childlike approach to experimenting and seeing what noises you can make out of an instrument. I think that’s quite good for this film in particular; it leans into what I’m good at, I think.
Any instrument you especially enjoy playing badly?
[Laughs] Well, I enjoyed playing the musical saw for this. I taught myself the musical saw, which was a lot of fun — just bananas trying to play it. It justified me buying the one that I’d always wanted. I just thought, I’m going to learn the saw for this movie.
The Twits is now streaming on Netflix globally.
